Location: Sagauache County, Co...3170 sq miles, not a single stop light!

Posts: 686

Re: Fitting The Long Range Rifle By Shawn Carlock

Great article shawn. I have preached this to trapshooters for yrs. Having your gun fit you is the #1 best way to aquire repeatability. In the trapshooting world where you are shooting a 200 target match, you cant afford to NOT have repeatability. With that said, i never was a good stock fitter for anyone but myself. I could make my gun work for me, but could not tell you how to make your gun fit. most trapguns these days have adjustable combs, and LOP adjustments, but i liked using the old redneck method of body putty to build up a stock. This way you are not as tempted to get your allen wrenches out and re-adjust after every bad perfomance. In this vane , i am building a red-neck A-5 stock for my new gun build. I simply took the standard savage stock and added body putty to it to make the grip what i wanted and to get the cheek peice where i needed it, and widened the fore-end. I now am going to take your advice and level the cheek to be parallel to the axis of the scope. After i am all done fitting it i will give it a good paint job and she will be done. AJ

First, I am not a good rifle shot having spent most of my time field shooting with shotguns so most bad groups are most likely me!

A year or so ago I thought that I hit upon a good load with 150 grain NAB's at a bit over 3K fps.
@ 100 yards I often got this type of target but assumed a mechanical problem.

This first target was left/right/left right.

This 5 shot group below is actually a 4 +1 group.
The holes are left/left/right top/left

I then switched to a different load on a different target.

Feeling cocky, I decided that the top right shot was a flier, so I decided to put a bullet dead into the bull so aimed at the lower black dot figuring it would hit dead center....I left in disgust :(

The rifle is built on a Savage 110 action with a Tupperware stock without a barrel nut ( Remington style barrel )
The barrel and angled scope base required high scope rings so cheek weld is certainly inconsistent ( I had assumed that using a scope it wouldn't matter ).
To make matters worse, this is a muzzleloader so after firing I need to stand, swab the bore reload, and then reset the rifle on the bags.

If cheek weld could cause this type of groupings, then I certainly will add an adjustable cheek piece to this stock.

I'd love to tell you if you put a cheekpiece on it will cure you issues, however it is hard to tell just looking at some groups. It does have the look of a mechinical problem of some kind. If there is a fit issue typically it will manifest itself ramdomly over a given area. There is an issue effecting you in a somewaht consistant manner, this to me smells of a something loose/shifting. Possible causes: stock to barrel fit/ clearance, internal scope issues, some kinds of base to action fits, ring to base fits. The first thing I would try is to put a different scope on it to eliminate the posibility of internal scope issues and go from there.

Excellent article, made me have a big think about my set up.
I couldn't help noticing the cheekpiece on the Rem 700P there. Where can I obtain a cheekpiece like that and what would it need for installation?